Father's warning over social media payments after daughter spends £4,000 without realising
The father of a woman with special needs has asked for people to be more cautious around paying for items on social media after his daughter spent thousands of pounds on TikTok.
Mike Holden from Stourbridge has urged parents to check safety measures and put in controls on sites such as TikTok after his daughter Grace managed to spend more than £4,000 coins on the video-sharing app via Apple Pay.
Mr Holden said he has also been trying to get help and assistance with either cancelling the payments or helping with payments, but has met dead end after dead end with Apple Pay and Grace's bank Santander.
He said it started when he noticed that 20-year-old Grace, who is classed as special needs as she has Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, was asking him for money and said he needed to see what she was spending the money on.
He said: "Grace has been using a platform on TikTok where they purchase plug-ins and things like that and the situation only came to light after she kept asking for money, so I said this needs to be fixed.
"I took her iPhone and went through her bank account to see what she was spending the money on, because of her autism, and started to see these Apple Pay payments that she'd made.
"It dawned on me that she'd been using this platform, but was totally unaware of some of the charge that were coming through as she was just double-clicking, with one of the biggest coins she bought being £599 as she'd gifted the universe to somebody."
